Postcolonial Reconstructions of Europe

The cosmopolitan cultural diversity of Europe tends to be counter-posed to that constituted by
and through multicultural others. The latter are seen to import their diversity into (and against)
the cultural plurality already present in Europe. Counter-posing cosmopolitanism and
multiculturalism in this way demonstrates a Eurocentred particularism at the heart of the
cosmopolitan European project. Habermas’s association of multiculturalism with what he calls
‘postcolonial immigrant societies’, for example, demonstrates a parochial understanding that
limits the ‘postcolonial’ to those ‘others’ who migrate to Europe, and renders invisible the long-
standing histories that connect those migrants with Europe. In this way, issues that refer to the
‘postcolonial’ are seen as beginning with immigration and carried by the non-European ‘other’.
These multicultural others are not seen as constitutive of Europe’s own self-understanding andas part of its history of colonialism (a history both of individual nation-states and the common
European project). In this plenary, I take issue with the parochial historiography that underpins
such accounts. In particular, I argue that insofar as the cosmopolitan project of Europe does not
come to terms with its colonial past and postcolonial present, it establishes and legitimizes
neocolonial policies both within and outwith Europe. Supposed ‘multicultural others’ are not
seen as legitimate beneficiaries of a postwar social settlement, but as obstacles to its
continuation and increasingly as targets of punitive policies. This is an outcome that subverts
the very promise of cosmopolitanism and calls urgent attention to the necessary postcolonial
reconstruction of (understandings of) Europe.